History

The Estes Park Aerial Tramway was designed and built by Robert Heron.  Mr. Heron became involved with tramways during World War Two.  The 10th Mountain Division contracted the engineering company Mr. Heron worked for to design a portable tramway for use in Italy and Germany. The task was assigned to Mr. Heron. A book entitled “The Tramway Builders”, by Philip A. Lunday and Charles M. Hampton gives the history about these tramways and the men who built them. 

After the war Mr. Heron traveled to Europe to study the tramways and became more fascinated with their design and capabilities.  Because of the steep terrain, many trams in Europe do not require any towers to support the wire ropes.  The entire length is a free span between the bottom and top stations.  The Estes Park Aerial Tramway utilizes this design. A free span is fairly uncommon in this country and this type of design affords a very smooth ride.

Mr. Heron also became one of the pioneering chair lift builders for the United States ski industry and built the first double chair lift in this country.

The Estes Park Aerial Tramway opened to the public in July of 1955.  Since then it has safely carried more than 3 million people to the summit of Prospect Mountain.   The Tramway is still owned and operated by the Heron Family.

The Tramway Safety Story

Riding this tramway, you ascend 1,100 vertical feet in less than five minutes, soaring sometimes 200 feet above the mountainside.  As your car glides up, the other car travels down. A 50 horsepower motor with an 18:1 gear reducer supplies the power which drives the 3/4 inch wire rope used to pull the cabins up and down the mountain. 

The two 10 passenger cabins are suspended from rubber wheeled carriages riding on 1-3/8 inch track cables.

Each cable weighs nearly six tons. At the upper terminal, these cables wind around a circular “dead man,” then fasten to massive concrete and steel anchors buried deep in solid granite.  At the lower terminal, they fasten to a 50,000 pound counterweight.  These counterweights, by moving up and down slightly in their wells, keep constant tension on the cables.

The cabins are fabricated from Plexiglas and light-guage steel.  Why Steel?  Weight is an advantage - in high wind, it gives amazing stability.

The Estes Park Tramway was designed to satisfy all safety regulations.

At the upper terminal, skilled operators in radio contact with the cabins and the lower terminal, control the complicated drive machinery. Dial and indicators tell speed, cabin position, motor amperage, etc.

What are Aerial Tramways?

Tramways are the easiest passenger transportation up and down mountains ever devised.  “Teleferique” (tele-fay-reek) is their musical name in France; in Germany, it’s the “luftseilbahn”; in Italy, it’s the “funivia”; and in Brazil, it’s the “funicular aereo.”

The Chinese should be credited with inventing the tramway. Fifteen hundred years ago, they strung crude wire ropes across river gorges and crossed hand over hand.  By Shakespeare’s time, the Germans had devised a true aerial tramway - windlass powered, with wheeled carriages riding fiber track ropes. These hoisted men, stone, and timber up to build the famed mountaintop fortresses, but the tramway idea faded due to lack of mechanical power.

The Swiss built the first modern passenger tramway in the Alps in 1874.  Today, Switzerland boasts more than fifty “teleferiques” with scores more in France, Italy, and South America.  An Italian system climbs Mt. Vesuvius and, in Rio, a famous two-way tramway soars up Sugar Loaf. Often, in Europe, tramways haul cattle, food, farm machinery - all these necessities for isolated mountain villages.  Frequently resort hotels depend solely on tramways for access and supply.

 

Tramways Come Stateside

Oddly, though Untied States mining companies built work tramways before 1900, passenger tramways didn’t catch on here until the 1930s, when New Hampshire built the Cannon Mountain Tramway at Franconia Notch.

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